


The New Weird

by UrbanAmazon



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Bonding, Canon-Typical Violence, Codependency, Developing Relationship, Domesticity, Eddie POV, Other, anne weying positivity, dan lewis positivity, falling in love and learning to love yourself back, foul-mouthed narrator, heart to heart talks, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 16:07:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17004813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrbanAmazon/pseuds/UrbanAmazon
Summary: Symbiosis is a process, like falling in love.  It takes work from both sides, and it’s weird.  Even the mundane bits.  Especially the mundane bits.





	1. One--

**Author's Note:**

  * For [featharii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/featharii/gifts).



There’s this moment, a day or two after the fire and the rocket ( _and Jesus but Eddie would be just fine if those nightmares about falling would stop, fuck, thank you_ ), when he crawls out of bed feeling like he slept negative hours, like he used to when he was tracking down a lead for the _Eddie Brock Report_ , only with the downside of a shittier bed and clothes that still smell a little like smoke and tear gas.  

Anne and Dan insisted he stay on their couch for the first night, and hell if Eddie had enough energy to say no, but… it was too warm, too soft and close.  It hadn’t felt _bad_ , and if he’d been in his right mind Eddie’d be counting every sympathetic look, every kind word as precious victories.  Not just from Anne, either; Dan, perfect boyfriend _Dr. Dan_ , offering the shirt off his back and looking at him like Eddie was a decent human being worth the attention.  Worth helping, no matter what shitty things Eddie had done.

Too much.  For now, maybe, but… too much.  Yeah. One night, and then he goes back to his bashed-up apartment, without even a warning note from his asshole landlord waiting for him on the door.  

So Eddie wakes up.  He staggers to the bathroom for a piss, mostly asleep, until he’s washing his hands in the stained sink and catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. 

And he looks… _wrong_.  He jerks back a step, skin crawling ( _but not_ ) and heart hammering in his ears, and he’s certainly awake _now_.  He puts both hands on the sink and leans in to stare.  He runs his hand over his face and wonders how the hell his skin got so pale, opens his mouth and runs his fingertips over his short, flat teeth, spends a full minute staring at his hands, because they’re wrong, they’re withered, they’re like fucking matchsticks, they’re _wrong_ \--

But then they’re not.  The moment passes, and the panic sweat all down Eddie’s back goes cool.  They’re Eddie’s hands, plain and human. Nothing wrong with him, nothing missing, as much as his brain had insisted, _insisted_ it.  All of him is there and all of him is human, and he’s standing in his bathroom with the ruined shower curtain in his shitty, half-wrecked apartment, and he’s alone.  

He’s _alone_.  

The thought flicks at him.  There’s signs all around him of how his life had been invaded, from the smell of burning rocket fuel lingering over San Francisco to the splinters and stains all over his floor.  If he tries ( _not even very hard_ ) Eddie can remember the taste of skull and meat and grey matter sliding down his throat just as easily as he can remember the sudden punch of pain through is ribs and the spread of cold through his chest as everything went black ( _blacker than black, empty black, the wrong black_ ).  The last few days had been filled with more terror and pain than Eddie ever wants to experience again, ever.  Please.

But at the same time, Eddie doesn’t have a goddamn mark on him.  Maybe that’s what set it all off. There’s no scar on his chest from where he should have died.  No dizziness or fluttering from an overclocked heart running a constant, overheating marathon. There’s not even any black stuck under his fingernails, nothing but the last few wisps of adrenaline fading from his brain.  He shouldn’t be feeling _any_ of this... right?  He’s unscathed. He survived, and it’s not like the last time he was left by himself, no.  His life is going to be _better_ now.  He should not be thinking of being _alone_ like it’s… like Venom’s--

( ** _goodbye, Eddie_** )   

His bed feels stiff and cold as he crawls back in.  Eddie wonders if this is what it’s like to lose a limb, cursed to always remember a phantom of _more_.  Maybe… maybe that _means_ something.    

It’s the next day that the symbiote finds him.  Eddie just happens to pass by his open window the next morning with a bag of trash in his hand, and there’s this giant fucking rat with half a Snickers wrapper caught in its snaggling, sagging teeth, and it’s like the thing’s dissolving into filthy seawater and twisting protein right there on Eddie’s ruined fire escape, but he knows, he just _knows_.  Eddie doesn’t even pause to think, or ask, and that should be weird.

But no shit, it was weird from the first moment, when a loser cannibal alien oozed into his skin like an oil slick and Eddie didn’t immediately _die_.  It started with _terrifyingly_ weird, and then swung wildly between _crazy hangover_ weird and _what the actual fuck_ weird, peppered with moments of strangely authentic excitement, moments when Eddie had to admit he was enjoying… it.  Everything. Enjoying doing something again, doing _anything_ , but in the end still something _good_.

 _Do the right thing, shithead_ , and all.

And maybe, just maybe… Eddie missed being part of something again.  Needed.

Maybe that’s why he never questions welcoming Venom back into his skin, into his _head_.  He lunges to the window, reaches for that puddle of glistening black without hesitation and plunges his hand into silky, viscous--

**_Eddie._ **

Yeah.  It means something.


	2. Two--

Once Eddie doesn’t have to worry about running for his life, or fighting for it ( _or Anne, and… uh, tongue_ ), Eddie can actually take the time to examine what symbiosis actually means for him, for _them_ , as the days continue without immediate doom and catastrophe. and it’s… well, it’s not _not_ -interesting.  It just takes a little getting used to, for the both of them.  That’s the thing about symbiosis: they both _want_ to get used to it.

But something’s still _off_.  

For the first day back together, Eddie barely feels like he’s got a symbiote at all.  Venom goes quiet, resting behind his eyes like the ghost of a migraine; Eddie can’t feel anything hurting, but he can feel a pressure and general sort of malaise hovering over his senses, which is even more bizarre because he’s still floating in this cloud of _relief_.  There’s no voice like liquid asphalt bouncing between his ears and inside his skull, just waves of not-noise, like mental static.  Like Venom’s tired.

Then there’s a charred smell that lingers in his nose no matter where he goes or what’s around him.  He can feel a flinch at the base of his skull when he walks past a restaurant with candles on its tables, or when he notices a jetstream distant and silent overhead.  

Through it all, his heart stays calm when it should have been racing.  Perfectly even beat like it’s a metronome, and that is just far too deliberate to be natural.  Eddie does not like it one bit, but the relief of knowing he’s not going to drop dead at any given minute is not insignificant.  

Plus, the only comparison Eddie has right now is a wounded animal hiding under Eddie’s bed ( _mentally, physically, both_ ).  Eddie might be a loser, but he’s not an _asshole_.

 **_Eddie,_ ** finally, at 2 AM the next morning, jarring him awake.   ** _Food._ **

Eddie’s so relieved he actually smiles against his pillow. He drags himself out of bed without even a little complaining. “Yeah.  Okay. Let’s get something. I got… eggs? I could make some eggs.”

**_Yessss… eggs._ **

Still, there’s no sudden yanking of his limbs, no snarled demands like before.  He waits a few days, until that strict grip on his heart tones down some and they both feel more or less _better_ , in part because Eddie tells himself he’s being nice ( _for once_ ) and maybe in part because he honestly doesn’t want to fucking know.  

Yeah, Venom had Eddie _eating_ people too, but to hell with that, clearly having an alien _pacemaker_ was the most pressing issue.  

Of course, with his spectacular sense of timing for appropriate conversations, Eddie blurts it out at a laundromat, at 9 AM on a Sunday; he’s got a coffee in one hand, someone else’s abandoned crossword book in the other, and the only other patron is completely engrossed in a _Golden Girls_ rerun on the dying rabbit-ear TV.  “So. The, ah… about the heart. Thing.”

Venom churns irritably.  It’s getting less and less disorienting now to feel like he’s got indigestion in his brain.  Eddie catches a glimpse of his reflection in the dryer’s clear plastic door; eyes narrowed into slashes of white, lips drawn forward and down.   ** _I apologized._ **

“You absolutely did not.”

**_Didn’t say it was to you._ **

It takes Eddie a few seconds.  “Wait, _Anne?_  You apologized to her, and not to me.  For almost giving me a heart attack?”

 **_Heart failure through cardiac atrophy,_ **because Venom is still a prideful little shit that desperately enjoys being right and dangling specific terminology over Eddie’s head in moments like this, but there’s something still there, something itching and uncomfortable.  

So Eddie waits it out.  He reads over the crossword, scribbles in a correction in black ink as another customer wanders into the laundromat wearing clothes that really should be incinerated instead of cleaned.  

 **_She… negotiated.  You apologized, so I had to apologize, before she would help me._  **It comes in words and in a sudden tickle in his chest, like Venom’s sliding around his organs.  For not the first time, Eddie wonders how the symbiote hides inside. In his brain? In cavities in his chest?  It’s a little disconcerting, when Eddie lets himself think about it too carefully. Is Venom… well, _everywhere_ , like some alien oil spill waiting to coat him head to toe?  At the same time, Eddie remembers the liquid pop of his jaw dislocating to fit an entire human _head_ down his throat; Venom isn’t just a suit to encompass Eddie, he’s… they’re--

 **_Your species is capable of impressive physical feats far beyond your baseline performance… but not constantly.  Not without conditioning, or consequences._ ** When Venom plucks words from Eddie’s vocabulary, there’s this moment where he can’t _read_ anything in front of his eyes.  The letters of the crossword twist into meaningless shapes, but the spasm of aphasia is gone in a blink.   **_I was not used to… giving a shit about my ride.  The mission was more important._ **

“Oh yeah?  And which mission was that, again?”

 **_… both of them._ ** At least Venom sounds… _feels_ a bit abashed, slinking away from Eddie’s head and curling across his shoulders instead.

“So back in the hospital, when you tried to say you could fix me--”

A muscle in Eddie’s calf twitches, flicking one of the bones Eddie had broken in the motorcycle crash for all of thirty seconds. **_I meant it.  If you… we… survived.  I would learn how, for us._ **

The picture gets clearer in Eddie’s head.  It’s a safe guess that the ebb and flow of the symbiote from insides to outsides is tied to blood pressure somehow; pump in, pump out, thoroughly integrated into blood and tissue and marrow with every beat.  Except the symbiote is a lot thicker than blood. _Blood’s thicker than water_ , sure, but Eddie also knows the _full_ quote: _the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb_.  

Probably some kind of irony in all of that, given his situation.

**_I am learning.  It won’t happen again.  Now, it’s only us._ **

The dryer sounds off with a grating buzz.  Eddie leaves the crossword to be picked over ad nauseum by the next patron and hauls himself to his feet, shaking off the distant prickle of his knees falling asleep from sitting for too long.  There’s an echoing shiver hidden deep within his spine, and it leaves a weird taste on Eddie’s tongue. **_How do you stand it?_ **  

“Stand what?”

**_You can’t see your insides.  Can’t command them to act or move like anything else.  Half the time you have no idea if they are strained or damaged.  You can’t tell… can’t see anything that isn’t in front of your eyes._ **

Eddie remembers that first night by the bridge, their first face-to-face, so to speak.  He remembers the way Venom’s speech wasn’t at all bothered by not having a throat, or by the exposed jaw and gums with nothing but empty air to support them; surprisingly, Eddie’s breakfast stays comfortably down in his stomach.  So Eddie says, “Show me?”

Memories fizz up like black champagne, red and slippery with viscera seen from the inside.  Eddie can see, can _taste_ masses of spongy yellow arterial plaque, the dark red rust of cancer creep, the sour reek of a liver failing and rotting from the inside out.  Everything is moving at the same time, with no sense of depth or distance. Blood pumping, chemicals fizzing apart and then smashing together with the catalyst of oxygen _burning_ everything at the cellular level that Venom can see and smell and taste.  It’s complete chaos, at such a microscopic level that Eddie can’t tell if they’re from human or animal hosts or something completely different, but at least Venom stops before Eddie needs to race to the public bathroom and puke.  

This must be what it’s like from Venom’s side of it, to be aware of it _all_ the time.  All his pieces, his fragments, breakable bones, vulnerable _meat_.  

 **_Yes.  No. Sometimes, but--_ ** Venom’s memories rise and retreat like bubbles popping, there and gone before they can leave any lasting harm.  Eddie feels a flicker of Riot ripping their shared face open, the roar of the MRI like the world’s biggest nails on the most fucked up chalkboard, and the terrible, agoraphobic _void_ of being ripped from Eddie, can’t breathe, the air burns, losing Eddie--

**_Without you, I die.  So… you are not the vulnerable one._ **

“V, I’m--”  Eddie’s so stunned he can’t really say anything to that.  Venom. The skull-eating alien that swallows bullets and thinks elevators are for pussies, that caught Eddie when he fell and then carried him along onto a launching rocket without fear, _that_ Venom.  Clinging to Eddie’s heart for dear fucking life.    

Eddie gets his clean laundry.  He stops in some high-end snack shop on the way home and spends more than he should on chocolate-coated potato chips.

It’s two days later when Eddie wakes up in the middle of the afternoon, just a nap because they spent the night doing honest-to-God pen-to-paper research on a solid lead for his first print story.  He wakes up but only halfway, all twisted up in his shirt on the sagging couch and his face is mashed up against his leather jacket that smells like his bike and motor oil. Eddie’s one ear is completely blocked in, and the windows are closed, and the jerk across the hall is still piss-terrified of him, so it’s quiet… but the good kind of quiet.  

In fact, it’s so quiet he can _hear_ his heartbeat in the tiny cave of his covered ear.  He can hear the liquid whoosh and shiver of muscle spasming, keeping him… keeping _them_ alive, and it’s this sticky wave of pressure rushing in and out against every inch of his skin.  Eddie takes a deep breath, and not only does it echo in his ears, he can hear his ribs lift and fall, cartilage and bone creaking like ice in a river.  Inside, in the dark and unseen gaps and shadows, wearing Eddie like armor and watching his back and his heart and everything in between, is Venom.

One of his vertebrae shifts, pinches uncomfortably in his lower back, but then a muscle flexes at Venom’s command and it _crunches_ back into place.  A contented sigh heaves out of Eddie.

Pleasure bleeds into the back of Eddie’s head, and reverberates from all the shadowed corners of his insides.   **_I’ve got us, Eddie.  Sleep._ **

“I know,” he says muzzily.  And he _does_ know.  “I got us, too, V.”  The frankness of it still hits Eddie in the gut a little, so hopefully it hits Venom in kind.  He doesn’t even have to think about it anymore; he _knows_ that Venom’s there under his skin, _with Eddie_ , as sure as he knows he _has skin_.  

Then, to soften the blow, “Parasite.”

 **_… loser._ **  


	3. One, again--

It’s when they find their equilibrium that things reach their weirdest.  The ‘we’ thing, it’s… well, Eddie can still call it a partnership if he’s inclined to being polite and he probably isn’t wrong, but now it seems like such an inadequate word.  They’re not just partners. They’re… _them_ , and Eddie wakes up every day feeling _alive_ , times two.

 **_Good morning, Eddie._ **  

Sometimes Eddie’s in bed, and he’s slept so deeply that he can still taste the alien atmospheres he dreamed about.  Or sometimes he opens his eyes and he’s already up and in the shower, with Venom making pleased noises at the cool water sluicing them clean.  Or sometimes he’s already goddamn _dressed_ , and there’s a newspaper waiting in his hands.

Then-Eddie would have been concerned about the implications of sleepwalking like that ( _not to mention the shower, not to mention the way Venom likes doodling patterns on Eddie’s skin like fresh tattoos_ ).  Now-Eddie is… kinda touched, actually.  His ears get a little warm, and he decides to try putting chocolate sauce on tater tots for breakfast.  

It’s trust, is what it is.  It’s in the way Eddie’s less and less likely to bother worrying about things he might have worried about, before.  Like talking to empty air as he walks down the street, uncaring for any weird stares from eavesdroppers ( _fuck ‘em, he’s having a conversation with his emotional support parasite--_ **_hey!_** ).  Like roll his eyes when Venom threatens to take a bite out of Eddie’s liver as a snack ( _Venom could, but won’t, because then there’d be no one to buy him tater tots_ ).  Like eating the gangbanger harassing Mrs. Chen ( _not just the head, all of him, clothes and bones and the half-empty flask of bad whisky in the bastard’s pocket, down the hatch_ ).  Eddie doesn’t even hesitate, because this is normal, now, and that’s dinner.  

It’s not just Venom’s personality is bleeding into Eddie, either; Eddie’s blurring into Venom right the hell back.  

Like how Venom _loves_ the investigative part of reporting ( _hunting_ ).  Sure, Eddie’s always been the sort of bastard that can’t help stirring up shit to be exposed in the light of day, starting trouble to _stop_ trouble… but Venom thinks the whole game is just _fun_.  

Tailing a target down a busy street, making Eddie’s stomach clench in warning just before they were about to turn?   **_We should follow from the rooftops.  Someone this stupid wouldn’t even think of looking up._ **

Poring through old records and statements from previous articles to back a target into a corner?   **_When we find this one, I say we eat his eyes.  For making ours work so hard._ **

Getting into restricted places to collect evidence?   **_Oh look, Eddie.  They have a fence._ **

The asshole playing guard for the dogfighting club Eddie tracked down in Bernal Heights picks up a nail-spiked bat, and Venom laughs.  It echoes through Eddie’s skull as Venom pours over his face, spills out through the newborn cage of teeth and drips out onto Venom’s slavering tongue.  “ ** _Well, well.  I think I’m getting a feeling… that you are a bad person._** ”  

Sarcasm.   _Sarcasm_.  Eddie’s… he’s so goddamn _proud_.

The asshole cowers and stares, still raising the bat as if it’s still a threat .  He’s not in on the incredible joke rippling through the wall of muscle and tar that shredded the warehouse door from its very hinges and let the dogs running free.  At least he won’t be alive much longer to suffer being so left out ( _and that is such a Venom thing for Eddie to think… but he still thinks it, and they still do it_ ).  

So it’s only natural when the line between what is Eddie and what is Venom becomes no goddamn line at all.    

They’re at the prison for the Kasady interview, with the visitor’s form on a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other, waiting for the wardens to check, double-check, and triple-check his authorization, which takes a while.  Now, Eddie’s used to waiting. Reporting teaches patience as much as it does tenacity, otherwise Eddie would’ve quit the whole business the first time he’d had to pull a seven-hour stakeout on his first beat back east. Waiting gives him the chance to mentally revisit his facts and plan his questions, and in the case of staring down a killer like Cletus Kasady, it lets Eddie compartmentalize all the thoughts he emphatically does not want crossing over into play.

Mrs. Chen’s cousin finally came through with a DVD in English ( _English subtitles, sure, but Eddie didn’t mind_ ).  Not meditation _exactly_ , but compartmentalizing isn’t too far removed from the concept.  

Pack away Anne.  Driven, tenacious Anne, sitting on the front step of the townhouse.  Anne, in the townhouse with the too-soft couch and eggshell paint and the smell of good coffee.  Anne wasn’t here, where it smelled of cement and rust, she was safe in that townhouse. Safe as houses.  Safe with Dan… _Dan_?  Huh.  Eddie isn’t sure when Dan got into his compartmentalizing routine, but damn right Eddie doesn’t want Dan anywhere near Kasady either.  Dan in his crisp white coat, not warden coveralls. Dan who offers to get Eddie’s favorite Thai take-out every single time Anne invites Eddie to dinner.  Safe as houses. _Not here_.  

It takes a few extra minutes, firmly linking Anne and Dan as far from Eddie’s immediate surroundings as he can, and--

 **_Why aren’t you doing that with me?_ **  It isn’t petulance in Venom’s tone, merely an observation.  

Eddie smiles, blinking back to the immediate reality of mildew, old paint, and clinging shadows in the prison.  He doesn’t have to compartmentalize Venom, because somewhere along the line he stopped being able to think of Venom as being anywhere else but _with Eddie_.  Nowhere would be safer, no place even _possible_ to comprehend.   _They_ were Venom.  

 **_Oh._ **  It hits… no, it doesn’t hit Eddie at all.  It’s just _there_ , like Venom is always there, only now it’s sliding forward out from hiding so it’s all Eddie can see.  Fluttering in his stomach, curled over his shoulders and up his spine, coiled at the back his throat in every breath.  Venom is _there_ , and won’t ever rest, won’t ever leave, because this, _them_ , is right.

It feels so much like love that Eddie can’t breathe for a second.  

Venom loves Eddie like it’s something worth doing.  Of course he loves Venom back, and the two of them are so tangled up in each other that Eddie has to love himself a little bit, too.  

The guard is finally coming back down the hallway, and shit, Eddie needs to finish filling out the visitor’s form--

But the form’s already filled out.  Every field is neatly answered in rigid block letters.  His name, his address on O’Farrell, his cell number, even where it asked for his profession ( _REPORTER and INDEPENDENT_ ), it’s all been correctly written in.  How long had Eddie been sitting there, zoned out and somehow still writing?

**_You were busy.  This is a you-thing, I know… but I helped._ **

On the signature line is this black smear of ink bleeding everywhere, _so much ink_ , Jesus did he break the pen in his hand?  Eddie squints at the mess of the signature blob, and… it’s _not_ a smear.  It’s an intricate _maze_ of lines and forks and whorls around the framework of ‘ _E Brock_ ’ in the finest, lightest line the pen could possibly make. It’s a signature, technically, but it’s also a pattern Eddie’s only ever seen in the opalescent ripples and veins of Venom’s skin.  It’s fucking _art_.  

**_It is us._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I started writing body horror, and it turned into a love story. Apparently body horror seems to slide in quite well with… well, snuggling, despite Eddie's mental swear-jar and Venom's propensity to treat Eddie's insides like a jungle gym. I ended up having quite a bit of fun writing these two losers softly falling in love with each other and themselves, so I do hope you enjoy it, and have a lovely Yuletide!


End file.
